A small media storm emerged last week after a profile of ‘Socially Responsible Vancouver tours‘ appeared in Travel section of the Toronto Star. Since 2014 the tours have charged tourists $185 per person ($195 for two people) to view the Downtown Eastside.
Today we took to the streets and reversed the narrative by leading a “yuppie gazing tour.” Our message was that we’re not okay with poverty tourism. We flipped the script and made rich people into the subjects of our gaze, marching through Chinatown while chanting, “Downtown Eastside is not a safari, drive away in your Ferrari” (as the event drew to a close, an actual Lamborghini appeared at Main and Hastings).
Our tour visited a number of the new gentrifying businesses increasingly strewn across our neighbourhood. We passed the new ice cream parlour on Gore Street that sells cones for $4.75, then stopped outside Matchstick Coffee which sells coffee for $3.25. After that we visited a new restaurant at Keefer and Gore where prices for a meal start at $15.
These retail spaces are zones of exclusion for low-income people. They are spaces where poor people are judged and watched suspiciously, spaces where low-income people can’t even afford the cheapest item on the menu. On most days — except for today — they are places where people with money can sit in comfort and gawk at poor and homeless people on the street and sidewalks outside.
These are also spaces that don’t cater to the low-income Chinese seniors who live in the Downtown Eastside. The new businesses push rents up, forcing establishments that have served Chinatown residents for generations to close and displacing low-income Chinese residents.
As we marched through Chinatown, a handful of yuppies didn’t like it when we turned our gaze on them. One man gave us the finger and told us to “fuck off” from his balcony in the new condo development at Keefer and Main. As a group of Downtown Eastside residents giving a tour in our neighbourhood we were told we are not welcome in our own streets. In the end it’s not surprising because this is how we are treated every day by the gentrifiers (and now “poverty tourists”) invading our neighbourhood.
Gentrification has intensified the commodification of our housing, our land, and our streets. Now gentrifiers are finding a way to commodify our very existence as low-income people, capitalizing on the “spectacle” of our poverty.
It’s not right to treat poor people like animals in a zoo, and it’s not right to treat our community as some sort of curiosity that you can tour and understand in twenty minutes. Walking these streets for a few minutes will not help anyone understand the realities of structural poverty, the legacies of colonialism, or the reasons for the ongoing crisis of homelessness. Our message is that if you want to open a dialogue come talk to the community and support the ongoing struggles of resistance, don’t gawk at the community.
Not only is the recent poverty tour incredibly exploitative, but it also erases the strength and power of our community. It erases the grassroots institutions that we ourselves have created over the years. It erases the incredibly rich history of resistance in the Downtown Eastside. It also erases the ongoing resistance and struggle against gentrification and displacement.
Over 800 people sleep on the street or in shelters on any given night in the Downtown Eastside. Gentrification is pushing up the rents in the little housing we have left. Welfare rates are $610 a month, and the shelter rate is $375.
We demand a raise to welfare, and we demand dignity and justice for all low-income people. We demand change in our neighbourhood, but we want change that we create ourselves. Change that we want, and a community with a future that includes all of us.
Thanks to Maria & Nate for contributing to this article.
Rena
August 16, 2016 at 6:30 pm
I’d like to mention all the movies and tv shows that use the DTES as a backdrop. Could eliminate some or a lot of the poverty paying people the going rate to be extras. This has been going on for years.
Marco
August 16, 2016 at 6:42 pm
Which shelter costs $375 dollars? Also what are doing to stop the high housing costs caused by foreign buyers and what are you doing to stop the exporting of jobs overseas?
John James
August 16, 2016 at 8:40 pm
As a future Community Mental Health & Addictions Worker in Surrey, B.C. I am of the opinion that any and all exposure of the D.T.E.S. of Vancouver is a good thing. The City of Vancouver should be shamed into doing more for this ‘Ghetto’ in Vancouver…spread the word coast to coast. I realize that initially making the most on fortunate and underprivileged inhabitants of this impoverished area a ‘spectacle’ is at first immoral, but I urge you to look deeper and the potential benefits.
Anita Romaniuk
August 17, 2016 at 7:08 am
Good grief! This “tourism” is appallingly insensitive and insulting to the people who live there. What kind of person would take this kind of tour?
VP
August 17, 2016 at 8:55 am
I disagree with praising the shortsightedness of such a neighbourhood campaign against new development in the area. Energy would have been better spent protesting the City, for lack of pressure and legal requirement for developers to build mixed use properties (including low income housing), and revitalization of buildings versus complete demolishment that Vancouver is so keen on.
De-ghettoising the DTES should be a top priority. Yes, that includes new buildings and new neighbours. Yes, that means displacement of some current residents, but creating a functional, inclusive and thriving neighbourhood should be the goal of these protesters, not preserving
streets that act like an open wound for the people Canadian society has failed the most.
We SHOULD be angry, but not at the people buying condos. They aren’t budgeting (or cutting) social programs, city planners or developers who encourage mindless gentrification. That includes permitting of the Pantages Theatre for demolishment that allowed for such a condo development to be built in the first place. We could have a living historic example of when Hastings was a thriving area, and instead are fighting over the scraps left by conservative leaders who prioritize everything else over mental health and assisting low income families.
Let’s get pissed that art galleries, mixed use spaces and programs like Insite are at risk.
Let’s get pissed that Vancouver provides next to zero mental health support for citizens who desperately need it.
Let’s get pissed at our mayor and the City of Vancouver for not putting overdue pressure on developers in neighbourhoods like the DTES (and everywhere else in the city) for creating ivory towers that don’t foster community development and interaction between residents.
Instead of fighting basic economics, let’s fight the groups that are aggressively harming our community. Together we can make the DTES a better place for families, inclusive to new residents, and create understanding over fear of the Other on both sides.
Tourist
August 17, 2016 at 8:58 am
Stop celeb spotting in Beverly Hills! “It’s not right to treat rich people like animals in a zoo”
Kel
August 17, 2016 at 10:04 am
As someone who works in the industry – you can’t just throw random people in any scene as ‘extras’. It’s a complicated business, and an innocent mistake by an inexperienced extra can cost thousands of dollars to reshoot a scene (if not more, in terms of man-hours, SFX, delaying production, etc).
Most background actors are not wealthy, and are constantly looking for work whenever they can get it. Maybe your workplace could hire a couple of DTES residents “at the going rate” to do your job?
Adrian
August 17, 2016 at 2:14 pm
Absolutely. People in the community have had to accommodate the film industry very often over the last months especially, with no identifiable kickback to said community.
molly
August 17, 2016 at 2:19 pm
I tell my kids: the solution is to share…. everything. This sounds easy but feels hard.
I try to walk the walk,,, and then i reach boundaries, limitations and fear. I realize that it is judgment that is inhibiting unconditional love.
Lucie
August 17, 2016 at 7:17 pm
I think it’s important to make clear that you only get 610 from welfare if your rent is 375 or more and that comes out of the 610. So if you’re luckey enough to find something that you’re left with 235 for the whole month to spend on bills food and clothing. I’m sorry but anyone knows you can’t survive off of that. They need to reassess the cost of living in vancouver in 2016. It’s disgusting.
Brent
August 18, 2016 at 8:43 am
I think they meant SRO or single-room occupancy… which is a very small single room apartment for people on social assistance. correct me if I’m wrong.
William Muller
August 18, 2016 at 10:57 am
Very lively conversation in reaction to this article can be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/4y5i6z/yuppie_gazing_tour_in_the_dtes_turns_the_gaze_on/